1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to postage meters adapted to produce an adhesive-backed postage label to be attached to the piece to be mailed, the label indicating the amount of the postage, and more particularly to a postage meter in which the label produced thereby expresses the postage in the form of an incremental bar code, the amount of postage being indicated in multiple code increments.
2. Status of Prior Art
The term postage refers to stamps, labels or printing placed on an item to be mailed, such as an envelope containing a letter, the postage serving as evidence of payment of the charge for mailing the item. Thus if the postage is 25 cents, one adheres on the envelope a 25 cents stamp purchased from a post office. But if instead of using a stamp, use is made of a postage meter, then the meter prints a 25 cents symbol on the envelope or on an adhesive-backed label to be applied to the envelope.
A postage meter is a machine used in bulk mailing to print the amount of postage on each piece of mail either directly on the piece or on a label to be adhered to the piece. In the postage meter disclosed in the Mikhail U.S. Pat. No. 5,098,130, the meter prints on the label not only the postage, but also the name of the post office from which the piece is mailed and the date of mailing.
A standard Pitney Bowes postage meter which is in widespread use throughout the United States, is provided with a single reel of adhesive tape from which a label is derived on which is machine-printed the required postage and data appropriate to the mailing.
The main drawback of a Pitney Bowes postage meter and similar meters in common use is that it is designed to print out a predetermined aggregate amount of postage, say $250 worth of postage. When this postage supply is exhausted, the machine is no longer operative and must be hauled back to a United States Post Office which upon receipt of a $250 payment, then resets the machine so that it can again operate to yield $250 worth of postage, after which the machine must again be brought back to the Post Office for resetting.
The need to return the postage meter to the Post Office whenever its postage supply is exhausted is not the only disadvantage of this meter, for the standard postage meter is not tamper proof and is capable of being illegally reset so as to continuously print out postage labels without making any payment at all to the Post Office.
Of prior art interest is the Durst et al. U.S. Pat. No. 5,239,168 assigned to Pitney Bowes which discloses a postage meter that not only prints out the postage amount, say 32 cents, and the date of mailing, but prints out in bar code form also the zip code of the destination.
The reason for this bar code printout is that the Post Office is equipped with a bar code reader and gives a mailer a discount if the item mailed presents the zip code in bar code form and thereby facilitates mail sorting operations. But a postage meter of this type still has to be returned to the Post Office when its postage supply is exhausted.
The Pusic U.S. Pat. No. 5,065,000 provides a postage meter which prints on a self-adhesive label to be attached to the piece to be mailed a bar code that gives the destination of the piece and other data that can be read by a bar code reader at the Post Office. The Mikhael U.S. Pat. No. 5,098,130 discloses a postage stamp in which the monetary value of the stamp is printed in bar code form to facilitate faster processing and sorting of mail pieces.
It is important that the distinction between a standard bar code symbol and an incremental bar code in accordance with the invention be understood.
A standard bar code is composed of a pattern of bars of different width and spaces therebetween whereby the information supplied by scanning this symbol depends on these differences. Hence a bar code symbol representing a 50 cent stamp would have the same length as a bar code symbol representing a one dollar stamp, but the bars in the 50 cent symbol would differ in their width from those in the one dollar symbol.
An incremental bar code is formed by equi-spaced bars having the same width, the information supplied by scanning this code depending on the number of bars counted. Thus an incremental code representing a one dollar stamp is longer than one representing a 50 cents stamp.